Concomitantly with the Manhattanization of buildings in recent years, elevators play an indispensable role as vertical transportation means of a building. Further, an elevator plays an important role in order that a disabled person such as a wheelchair user may move between floors.
Here, in case of fire, presently, an operation in which an elevator is shifted to a refuge floor, thereafter the operation of the elevator is stopped is to be carried out. That is, in the existing circumstances, elevators are not positively utilized as evacuation means. However, it is a hard labor to move from an upper floor to a refuge floor (normally ground floor) by using stairs, and the evacuation takes much time.
Thus, in recent years, the demand for positively utilizing elevators as evacuation means at the time of occurrence of a fire is increasing. In, for example, Pat. Document 1, as a method of efficiently evacuating personnel in a building by using elevators, a method of grouping floors to be evacuated, guiding the personnel in the building to the grouped floors, and causing the elevators to respond to the grouped floors is disclosed.